The Union, in partnership with the American Thoracic Society, has developed a webinar series to discuss if the goals outlined in the World Health Organizaton End TB Strategy and subsequent commitments made at the UN High Level meeting on TB in September 2018 to eliminate TB are, in fact, possible. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the TB response was falling behind the timeline but in the last year the impact of the COVID-19 has set back the fight against TB by over a decade, to 2008 levels. The webinar series examines whether TB Elimination is still a relevant goal and if it can be achieved by 2030, and what will be needed to make it happen.
The webinars are free to join.
The next session is titled ‘Active Case finding and treatment; Time to close the gap’ and will be live on Wednesday 28 July at 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM CEST (beginning 11:30pm AEST). Uvistra Naidoo, MBBS from the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative and TB-CRE associated investigator Dr Thu Anh Nguyen will chair the session.
Four impressive speakers are lined up to present and take questions from the audience:
Yogan Pillay, PhD (Clinton Health Access Initiative) "What have we learnt from surveillance surveys regarding finding the missing cases and what next?"
Morten Ruhwald, MD, PhD (FIND) "Tools to allow for mass screening and active case finding"
Max O'Donnell, MD, MPH (Columbia University) "How drug susceptibility testing supports current and future TB treatments"
Anneke Hesseling, MBChB, MSc, PhD (Stellenbosch University) "How to find the missing cases in children"
Watch the first two sessions again
If you missed the session one and two, you can watch them here:
Is TB Elimination Possible?
The road to elimination starts with prevention
Mobilising for the end game
The fourth and final session in the series, titled ‘Mobilising for the end game’, will be held on Wednesday 1 September at 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM CEST.